


Audiophile

by magdalyna



Series: Cultverse [3]
Category: Bandom
Genre: Creepy, Cults, Dubious Consent, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-07-04
Packaged: 2017-11-09 03:49:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdalyna/pseuds/magdalyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon makes sense of the world through sound and photographs</p>
            </blockquote>





	Audiophile

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Beating [Faster, Faster]](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/9657) by theaerosolkid. 



> This is the cultverse that queenofhell started.
> 
> Creepy stuff happens.

*

Sound was always a part of Jon’s life. It was always a part of him. 

*

Life before Pete and William and their messages doesn’t matter. He’s a different person now, too foreign to go back. There isn’t a place in his old life for him now besides. It’s like that for everyone they change. He is grateful and hates them for it at the same time. 

*

He met Pete and William within days of each other. They had the same look in their eyes, talked about the message, the music the same way. They might as well have been the same person. But Jon is observant, catches the little quirks that make them unique. 

Pete is wild, loud and brash. The shrewd leader. William follows. They all follow. 

*  
 _  
They are hanging out in a ratty hotel room and the others have left. William questioningly looks at Pete and Pete nods almost imperceptibly. But Jon is quick about these things, catches the look._

_Pete asks ‘Are you ready, Jon?’ like they all know Jon’s answer already. Just to be polite._

_Jon understands that now he will get the Message, whatever it is._

_He breathes ‘Yes’ and they act as one._

*

Sound is in him completely, crawling and scratching up his insides and it will never abandon him, so he can hearseefeeltaste the way music breaks, curves, bends, twists into one thing and another. He’s always had this talent. 

He becomes a sound tech for TAI, fiddles a bit with all the instruments, learns them. He puts his skills to good use for the greater message that Pete has, that William has. 

*

He is aware of the tensions in Pete’s newest venture, the startlingly youthful new band Panic! At the Disco. He had known that Pete liked them young, but he didn’t realize anything would come of it. 

He was called in for damage control when Pete found out that Ryan had tried to convert Brent as a gift to Pete. Jon mused that they were lucky Pete wasn’t that angry with them. He found out that Brent had taken off for Vegas by the time he got to their hotel. He stood still as Ryan and Brendon got each other wound up and anxious. Spencer was glaring at the world through his hair. Jon felt sorry for them, that they weren’t complete in the same way anymore. 

He was there almost immediately after Brendon was attacked and needed to be reconditioned by Pete and Ryan in a locked bathroom. 

Because of these two instances, Pete and William decided that he should be the fourth member of Panic!. There was no way he would not follow their orders. 

* 

All things considered, they had all dodged a bullet with Brent. His siblings reported that he wouldn’t come out of his room, had a haunted look in his eyes. Jon knew that Brent wouldn’t talk about Pete’s message. Ryan had been successful at least in instilling this low level loyalty. For that, Jon was thankful. He didn’t want Brent to have to be killed. 

*

He was there when Ryan shared Brendon for the first time with Spencer, with him. It was the most exhilarating, erotic, transcendental, weird thing that had ever happened to him, besides music and the message. Besides Pete and William. 

*

A newly minted member of Panic! and Jon was so immersed in the music he almost didn’t realize that Pete was losing grip of William. Almost, but not quite. 

But he was still alive because of his observational skills and he hadn’t let lack of practice dull them. 

He could see the cracks in their partnership, could see where and why William was starting to stray. Could see where and why Pete didn’t seem to notice or care. 

He knew it had something to do with Gabe. Hell, it had everything to do with Gabe. 

Pete was spread too thin, too focused on tours and side ventures like Clandestine and random tries at being a DJ across the country. 

And then while on tour he heard from William that Pete had let Gabe take Patrick into his basement. He had frozen in his place. He had heard stories about Gabe’s basement from William and even from Gabe himself. It was actually one of the first things Gabe had told him. That and the Cobra. Jon has no idea what the Cobra is all about. 

Pete really was losing it. 

*

The thing about being the newest and hopefully last member of Panic! was that even after the mind blowing sex, he still had trouble fitting in. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; it’s just that the lines had already been drawn. They had their roles that they couldn’t drift from. 

Ryan and Brendon were the soul and Voice, Spencer and Jon kept them grounded. This was the way things were. 

So he starts taking pictures with any camera he can get his hands on. 

*

The photography translates well from his natural state of observation. He always saw the world in fragments, relied on music, the sound to make everything whole. 

When he gets back to Vegas after their tour he has shoe boxes and envelopes and bags full of negatives and developed pictures and ideas for more crammed in his head. 

Spencer looking the other way as he’s drinking coffee. 

Ryan poring over papers, scribbling on them with pens and pencils. 

Brendon practicing his scales mouth wide and stretched. 

He could go on and on, has forgotten most of the moments catalogued in the firm gloss. 

This makes him feel complete, part of the band in a way the sex never could. 

*

Jon really gets worried that Pete doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing anymore when he gets a call from William telling him that Pete has overdosed in a Best Buy parking lot. Jon wonders how William gets his information so quickly and accurately. He doesn’t ask. 

He tells the others and Spencer drops any expression from his face, just like Jon. Spencer is observant as well. Jon suddenly has an image of an onion being peeled, revealing emotions and quirks and humanity. Whether the onion is Spencer or all three of them Jon doesn’t know. Ryan whips out his Sidekick and Brendon looks wrecked. 

Pete is leading them all and he can’t keep it together? How can Jon keep them grounded, follow his orders, if Pete insists on doing stunts like this?

Jon wants to get hopelessly drunk. 

The only thing that stops him from doing so is the way Ryan flinches if he thinks no one is looking whenever Brendon shows up drunk on their bus. He won’t let Ryan catch him drunk. Buzzed, but not drunk. 

*  
 _  
Pete Wentz is starring at him over his coffee. Jon is drinking his now, the warm burn sliding over his tongue like vowels and consonants. Sound._

_This is the second time they’re hanging out._

_Jon doesn’t know what to think about this. He hadn’t been friends with either the Arma crowd or the Racetraitor crowd. He had liked the music, but wasn’t really a fan._

_They have been silent for almost five minutes._

_“I’m going to change your life.” Pete says seriously, like he says this sort of thing all the time. Maybe he does. For a brief second, the sound that Jon always has with him, a low buzzing that soothes him, makes him calm, it stops. He is chilled by this, chilled and intrigued. He stays where he is and lets Pete talk some more._

*

He slams the piece of scum against the wall, hard. He strangles the bastard, hoping. Just hoping. Watching. 

“Watch yourself,” Jon hisses in his ear. 

Gabe sort of makes a choking noise. 

“Stay away from them. From mine.” Jon spits, furious. 

Gabe looks dazedly away at a fixed point somewhere in Jon’s chest. 

Jon slaps him hard, open-handed, and Gabe chokes again. Jon leans back, lessens the weight. “I know what you did to Brendon, last year,” he breathes. “On the Truckstops tour. I know it was your little disciples who did that to him. You almost broke him, almost took him from Ryan. You scared the everloving fuck out of him and you hurt him. I didn't like that, even then, and I like it less now.”

Gabe is silent, Jon assumes to conserve his oxygen. 

“You're so lucky he lived,” Jon says, squeezing, and he can feel it as Gabe shudders. “You're so lucky that he came back to us, whole. If not.”

“I-” Gabe tries, and Jon squeezes again. 

“So all I'm here to say is: stay away from ours. I don't care what you've got going on against Gerard, but we're with Pete, regardless of where Ryan happens to be playing this week.” He pauses. “Do you understand me, you sick piece of shit?”

Gabe nods, frantically, and Jon eases his grip, loosens the vice of his palm and lets Gabe choke out, “Yes, fine, you didn't have to- ”

“I mean it,” Jon says seriously. He lets the slime ball go, slinking off into the night. 

Jon can only hope it did the trick. 

*

The tattoos are Pete’s idea. 

Sure, he could have them put the Bartskull on themselves in a tangential way of ownership. But Pete wants them to have a unique blend of Pete and their own imagination on their bodies forever. Jon thinks it may be genius. 

Brendon went first with Pete to a neutral artist in L.A. and got the piano keys coming out of his skin. Jon thinks that it’s so fitting and perfect of Brendon. The sloughing off of a dead existence as a believer of a truth other than Pete. Jon smiles at the enthusiasm and meaning that Brendon has for the tattoo. 

Ryan was next. Second verse same as the first. The Tom Waits lyrics are so strangely appropriate Jon wonders if old Tom wrote them with Ryan in mind. Ryan is all smiles and sprawl that Jon can’t help but be happy for him. 

Spencer was after Ryan. He got his between his scapulas, under his neck so that he could cover it up with a shirt. His was of a Phoenix with its wings fully spread. Jon couldn’t help think that it was beautiful. Beautiful and the embodiment of all that Pete had wanted. 

Jon wasn’t so sure what he would get, could get. 

But then the idea struck as he was tuning a guitar to idle away some time before a show. 

His tattoo is of a lyre flanked by two fiery wings with a banner underneath it that read _Steal me a dream_ in clear cursive ink on his right bicep. It’s a blend of Ryan and Brendon and Spencer. Jon couldn’t be more pleased. Pete just rolls his eyes and grins. When Ryan sees it he smiles, knows that the phrase comes from the same song as his.   
They all smile that night, cozy and post coital. 

*

There are rumors going around about Gerard Way and Gabe. 

That they’ve started a war between the messages. That they’re long lost brothers. That Gabe’s the reason Mikey isn’t going to be on the Projekt Revolution tour. That they’re secretly lovers. 

Gerard is on another label entirely, so Jon hasn’t met him. He’s not sure if there is any truth to what’s being said behind closed doors. He doesn’t care, as long as they both stay away from his brothers. He has orders, has connected with them. He won’t let them get hurt. 

And then Ryan gets it into his head that he wants to meet Gerard. 

He hears about it from Spencer later, after an almost hysterical Brendon calls Pete. The buzzing sound turns sharp, serrated, plinking away at piano keys when he hears this. Jon knows that Spencer is defenseless when it comes to anything Ryan wants from him. He feels a throbbing headache brewing- funny, he normally associates that kind of headache with Pete. 

“This isn’t going to end well.” He observes dourly. Spencer looks mildly surprised that he shows emotion. Surprised he even voiced the opinion they both shared. 

*

When they perform, it’s like a hedonistic church with flashing lights and dance numbers. 

They are larger than life, with save you with the greater message. 

Jon loves it, will fight to keep it. Will fight to keep his family together. 

He will not fail.

 

~fini


End file.
